By way of example, participants in a network, such as the Internet, can be producers, consumers, and transducers. A producer creates information. As an illustration of a producer, a pharmacy could output to the network the types of Over-The-Counter (OTC) medication purchased during a certain time period. A consumer uses information. Thus, a consumer could be a program that can schedule refills of particular OTC medications when inventory reported by the pharmacy meets a predetermined low level. A transducer transforms the information and creates transformed information. Consequently, a transducer could examine the numbers of remaining bottles of particular OTC medications for certain ailments, such as colds, and determine that one OTC medication is more preferable than another. The transformed information can then be made available to a consumer or another transducer. For instance, a consumer could use this information to schedule more frequent refills of the more preferred OTC medication.
Although networks having participants are valuable, there is a need for providing effective interoperability between the participants in networks.